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As regulators worldwide crackdown on digital currency exchanges, lending platforms, and other companies, Bitcoin thought leader Joshua Henslee released this video to share his thoughts on the market. It’s not a pretty picture.
The mass theft on Solana
Henslee opens the video by summarizing the current mess on Solana. Rogue users were able to clone private keys and spend from wallets that didn’t belong to them. While he admits his technical understanding of the situation may be flawed, the larger point remains the same: 99.9% of what goes on in this industry is criminal activity and theft. It’s basically one big attempt to sell stolen coins for fiat.
Michael Saylor steps down as MicroStrategy CEO
Henslee moves on to the latest news about Michael Saylor—him stepping down as CEO of his company MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) after several decades at the top. While Saylor has taken a position on the board, Henslee hints that he was probably ousted after the company lost $1 billion in a single quarter due to holding BTC. According to the numbers reported, Henslee says that the company would have broken even or even made money if Saylor had not gone all in.
The ETH Merge
Henslee says that the so-called ‘Merge’ is likely responsible for ETH’s recent price pump. However, he reiterates his stance that this will solve nothing important. “ETH is fundamentally broken,” he says, reminding us that Ethereum developers have been talking about these solutions for years while never delivering. He describes these solutions as a “fool’s errand.” He expects a short-term price pump due to the upcoming ‘Merge’ but believes ETH will dump again after it, whether it’s successful or not.
Coin mixing and government crackdowns
There’s been some big news that Henslee wants to make the main focus of this video—on August 9, the Treasury Department of the United States banned U.S. citizens from using Tornado Cash, a coin mixer on Ethereum. This led the developers to immediately pull down the project’s GitHub, laying bare the lie of ‘decentralization’ that many believe in.
“Reality is going to hit these folks hard,” Henslee says, reminding us that this will inevitably come to BTC, too. He even believes that some of the swapping pools on BSV are in danger if they get big enough. “There’s no way they’re going to allow this stuff to happen,” he says.
The Tornado Cash ban is only one part of a multi-faceted crackdown. Henslee reminds us that digital currency exchange Kraken is also in the U.S. government’s crosshairs for allegedly violating sanctions related to Iran.
“It’s not a coincidence that this is right after a crash,” he says, noting that Uncle Sam is going after all of this when the industry is weak. He expects to see much more government action going forward, especially with the announcement of extra funding for the IRS and some other agencies.
Tether printer goes bbbbbrrrrr…
Henslee notes that Tether finally woke up and printed a billion USDT after a long hiatus. He points out that the BTC price moved immediately to the upside, laughing at how obviously these two things are correlated. He speculates that this could be an attempt to create exit liquidity to get as much fiat currency out as possible since they realize that “the jig is up.”
Coinbase is getting squeezed
Henslee quickly recaps the series of unfortunate events to strike Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) recently. They’re under investigation by multiple entities, including the SEC. He laughs about how they are in bed with firms like Goldman Sachs and Blackrock, reiterating how this is the antithesis of the original purpose of Bitcoin. He notes that these big partnership announcements pump the Coinbase stock price, and indeed that did happen when the announcement came that Blackrock and Coinbase were partnering up.
BSV-related news and events
Henslee touches on some of the events in BSV right now. He points out that the Haste token is slowly rising and recently hit 20,000 satoshis. “Honest businesses that are trying to make money are doing well,” he says, pointing out that Haste isn’t laying off staff, going bankrupt, and experiencing the carnage the industry is facing. In fact, they recently posted a Tweet proving they had lots of new signups.
👀📈 New users registered for the monthly free roll tourney just 7 days into August… Prolly nuthin. pic.twitter.com/1jOt66tolw
— Haste Arcade | Game Platform (@hastearcade) August 8, 2022
Key takeaways
In this video, Henslee paints a picture of utter carnage in the digital currency industry. Top exchanges are under investigation by law enforcement agencies, so-called superior blockchains are falling apart, coin mixers are being banned by national governments, leading to their GitHub repositories disappearing, and even Michael Saylor hasn’t made it through unscathed.
Things are looking rough for the industry, yet on Bitcoin SV, builders keep building, and some of the tokens associated with legitimate projects keep rising. The BSV ecosystem was always going to decouple from the wider digital currency market due to utility, and while it’s probably premature to say that’s happening right now, there are early signs that it’s starting to occur.
Watch: The BSV Global Blockchain Convention presentation, The Next Big Thing: Incubating Start-Ups on the BSV Blockchain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP7X4FmekZ8
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
